Friday, April 8, 2011

The African American West: A Century of Short Stories spans Jim CrowTwentieth Century of black fiction.

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Sunny Nash, Author

My story, Amen, is in The African-American West: A Century of Short Storiesco-edited by Bruce A. Glasrud, award-winning writer-editor and Professor Emeritus of History, California State University, East Bay, with Laurie Champion.

Experts are now calling me a western frontier writer, a title of which I am extremely proud, although I write most every style; writing is my career. What I try to capture in my portrayal of the Old West are the roles of African Americans and other ethnic groups in the development of the Old West.

In addition to Jim Crow laws, slavery, the Civil War, Reconstruction, civil rights, U.S. race relations and other pertinent subjects, my topics include diverse populations that are infrequently documented. The African-American West (University Press, Colorado) proves that there is a great deal of interest in this area fiction writing, demonstrating numerous journalistic reports, historical accounts and personal reflections and memories in the form of short stories among the array of authors in this book, covering the 20th century on the Western Frontier.﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿

My story, Amen, like Christ in Texas by W.E.B. Dubois, is about a religious aspect of the African American West. My story is about a religious meeting, typical of those held in the community where I grew up in Texas, still considered at that time to be the Western Frontier (1950s). Amen's little girl witnesses a traveling preacher's dishonesty, similar to an experience I had with a cousin who took me to a revival meeting. I knew it wasn't exactly like going to church, being on a week night after work and school, and conducted in an abandoned rent house.﻿ Like me, the little girl in my story, didn't like church and would not have gone had she thought it was a real church. Sunday was enough!

When I think of my early church experiences, I was quite frightened by the congregation's response to a preacher yelling that we were all going to burn up in hell if we did or didn't do certain things. I couldn't understand most of what the preacher spat loudly between clinched teeth. So, I didn't know what I was supposed to do or not do. Everyone else seemed to understand what was expected, throwing hands in the air, getting happy and shouting, Amen! I sat glued to my seat afraid to open my mouth. ﻿To get happy in church or a religious meeting was a trance-like condition of individual members of the congregation when they seemed to experience an out-of-body state and be in intimate contact with the spirit. This state could last for a few minutes or longer with the person emerging from the trance with an improved attitude or physical condition.﻿

I am privileged to have been included in such great company as novelists, journalists, essayists, social activists, screen writers, historians, a Buffalo Soldier, Pulitzer Prize winners, a Poet Laureate, and other literary professionals. My story, Amen, was first published in Southwestern American Literature Journal (Texas State University Press), edited by Mark Busby. This story is now a chapter in a work of fiction I am completing. Read an excerpt from "Amen" by Sunny Nash

Black Cowboys on the Old Western Frontier

﻿﻿﻿﻿My grandmother, Bigmama, on whose philosophies I based my first book, Bigmama Didn't Shop At Woolworth's, was part Comanche and did not buy into some aspects of southern religious practices. Her father and all of his relatives were Black Indians that Bigmama referred to as prairie people. Bigmama had a Comanche name, which no one was allowed to say out loud. Her brother-in-law, Uncle George, called her by the name when he wanted to tease her. Bigmama didn't take teasing about her Comanche name very well, although Native American blood is common in families like ours.﻿ "There were Black Indians everywhere in this family," Bigmama said. "They were Comanche--full-bloods and half-bloods." Today, we have to think twice about what we call people, depending on the rules of political correctness. Bigmama did not care about political correctness then and would not care about political correctness now.﻿

﻿Black cowboys are also natural occurrences in our family today. In fact, some of the first cowboys on the Texas range were black cowboys, many of whom had been slaves or they had come into the territory for freedom before Texas was a slave state.

Sunny Nash's Uncle TinneyBigmama's Brother-in-law

Bigmama's brother-in-law, Uncle George, was a cowboy who broke wild Mustang horses on a ranch near Iola, Texas, where he lived until he died. He had to be pretty old when I knew him. Bigmama was born in 1890 and Uncle George was about her age. However, neither of them were born during slavery, but either or both of them could have had a slave or two in their ancestry. Another of Bigmama's brothers-in-law, Uncle Tinney, was also a cowboy, or at least he dressed like one. "Tinney's hands are too soft for a real cowboy," Bigmama said. "Tinney was more interested in making easy money selling moonshine. He really liked to dress."

A woman who spoke her mind in private, Bigmama would never let people know exactly what she thought. "If you are not careful, people will use what you think and feel against you," I heard her say many times. "Why would you give a person bullets to put in a gun to shoot you? No, some things are better left unsaid."

Bigmama detested howour neighborhood church allowed dancing, shouting, screaming and the fainting off of certain church ladies into the waiting arms of handsome deacons. "I don't believe any of it is real," she said. Equally distasteful to her were the preachers, some of whom seemed more interested in how much money was on the collection plate or which sister was wearing the tightest outfit than how many souls they could save. She never went to revival meetings, which she compared to freak shows. My mother went to those performances to hear the gospel singing. It was never very good singing, though. My mother sang much better than traveling choirs in bad-fitting robes.

The child in my story is an observer who discovers the trickery of the preacher and her neighbor's participation in the perceived deceit of those in the congregation. Unlike me, having overheard conversations at home, the child in my story had no idea of the sham until she realizes that everyone knows about the trickery. These events were designed for the amusement and regular entertainment of isolated frontier communities. The traveling preachers went from one out-of-the-way town to another, recruiting volunteers like the neighbor in my story to play along with the act and get paid secretly.﻿ The acts included a volunteer pretending some illness or disability and then being miraculously cured by the phony preacher-healer in front a supposedly stunned audience. Then came the collection plate. Although few believed what they had just seen, they placed their hard-earned pennies into the plate as compensation for a good show. If the acting and the preacher's music were really good, then the plate would fill up. If not, then not so much money would be collected.﻿﻿

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Lynching in the Early Twentieth Century American West

Lynching in Waco, TexasJesse Washington 1916

Although beatings, murder and lynching on the Western Frontier did involve former slaves and their descendants, much of this violence was not limited to African Americans and Native Americans. Cases of lynching in the West occurred for the same reasons they happened in other parts of the nation. Many of these cases of murder occurred as a result of property rights, territorial disputes, employment, ethnic differences and political competition. Immigrants were often targets. In fact, in California, during the Gold Rush when Chinese miners began attempting to purchase claims and enter the mines, lynching of Chinese miners increased to discourage the group from competing for the precious ore.﻿﻿﻿

Glasrud and Champion included in The African American West DuBois' frontier story, Jesus Christ in Texas, about a Waco, Texas, black man accused of attacking a white woman and being lynched by a mob. The fictionalized lynching in DuBois' short story is reminiscent of the factual lynching of Jesse Washington. Charged with the rape and murder of a white woman, the 17-year-old farmhand, reported to be mentally retarded, was lynched in the frontier town of Waco, Texas, in 1916.

The lynching photograph was taken by a commercial photographer and published on a postcard showing the body of Washington who confessed to raping and killing a white woman, for which he was castrated, mutilated and burned alive by a cheering mob that reportedly included the mayor and police chief. An observer wrote that "Washington was beaten with shovels and bricks. . .[he] was castrated, and his ears were cut off. A tree supported the iron chain that lifted him above the fire. . . Wailing, the boy attempted to climb up the skillet hot chain. For this, the men cut off his fingers." On the back of the postcard was written: “This is the barbecue we had last night. My picture is to the left with a cross over it. Your son, Joe."

Black Women in the Modern American West

BREAKING THROUGH Lighting the Way

Edited by Sunny NashForeword by Carolyn Smith Watts

(l-r, rear) Evelyn Knight, Patricia Lofland

Bobbie Smith, Alta Cooke, Carrie Bryant

Vera Mulkey, Wilma Powell, Doris Topsy-Elvord

(seated l-r) Autrilla Scott, Maycie Herrington

Dale Clinton & Lillie Mae Wesley (not present)

Racial tensions were prevalent in many parts of the West and the rest of the nation, in areas for may years after the frontier was officially closed. Although, one would not have expected to find racism and discrimination in housing, transportation, employment, education, public and other aspects of daily life.

Sunny Nash is a leading author on race relations in the U.S., according to the Association of American University Presses, which chose her book, Bigmama Didn't Shop At Woolworths, on life with her part-Comanche grandmother during the Civil Rights Movement, as a resource for understanding U.S. race relations. "A leading author on race relations in the U.S.," reported UHV NewsWire of Nash. Miami-Dade Public Library System in Florida recommends her book for Native American collections. "An unmined vein of American History," wrote Lars Eighner of Nash’s African American-Comanche connection to the Old West.
Nash, one of the first black women graduates of Texas A&M University and first black woman to graduate from the Department of Journalism at Texas A&M University, earned a Bachelor of Arts Degree with concentration in Broadcast Media & Mass Communication in 1977. Nash blogs on U.S. and civil rights history from Rosa Parks to contemporary topics such as social media and the effect on race relations, using her book, which is listed in the Bibliographic Guide to Black Studies by the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in New York.

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About Sunny Nash

Sunny Nash is a leading author on race relations in the U.S., according to the Association of American University Presses, which chose her book, Bigmama Didn't Shop At Woolworths, on life with her part-Comanche grandmother during the Civil Rights Movement, as a resource for understanding U.S. race relations. "A leading author on race relations in the U.S.," reported UHV NewsWire of Nash. Miami-Dade Public Library System in Florida recommends her book for Native American collections. "An unmined vein of American History," wrote Lars Eighner of Nash’s African American-Comanche connection to the Old West.
Nash, one of the first black women graduates of Texas A&M University and first black woman to graduate from the Department of Journalism at Texas A&M University, earned a Bachelor of Arts Degree with concentration in Broadcast Media & Mass Communication in 1977. Nash blogs on U.S. and civil rights history from Rosa Parks to contemporary topics such as social media and the effect on race relations, using her book, which is listed in the Bibliographic Guide to Black Studies by the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in New York.